UK National Lottery game shows 1998-2016

Go Harvey Go

Warning: this is going to be a really, REALLY long post.

The UK National Lottery draws depart from BBC1's Saturday night schedule tonight after 22 years - so I thought I'd take a look at the game shows that have been built around them for much of that time.

The first one, in the spring and early summer of 1998, was The National Lottery Big Ticket. It was hosted by Anthea Turner (who, probably not coincidentally, had hosted most of the draws up to that point) and Patrick Kielty, and apparently it was the first UK game show to offer a £100,000 cash prize (airing some months before Chris Tarrant started offering ten times that amount). Unfortunately, it was also rubbish, and hence fell off the air after one series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGWxgaIOeAw

Next, in the spring of 1999, was We've Got Your Number with Brian Conley. No big prizes in this one, and it wasn't quite as rubbish as Big Ticket (certainly the title sequence was better), but it too only lasted one series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn7zTpI4icA

However, June 1999 saw the arrival of the first successful show. So successful was it, in fact, that it lasted six series, spawned an American version, and is still regarded by some as the best of all the UK Lottery game shows. But perhaps that was no surprise: it was produced by Celador (then riding the crest of a wave with the aforementioned Chris Tarrant show), it had great hosts in Simon Mayo and later Phillip Schofield, and its end game was almost always epic.

It was, of course, Winning Lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rUK4Mn10Y8

And for a while, it was the only successful Lottery game show. Red Alert, from the producers of Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, ran for two series in late 1999 and early 2000; unsurprisingly it was similar to DFYT but was nowhere near as good, and Lulu was certainly no Chris Evans. On The Spot with Des O'Connor, meanwhile, lasted for just six episodes in summer 2000, and probably has a good claim to being the least memorable of all the shows (although it still has a Wikipedia entry).

Only in January 2001 did the next successful show arrive, in the form of Jet Set with Eamonn Holmes. While not as spectacular as Winning Lines, it did offer the possibility of being on holiday somewhere exotic throughout the series - Los Angeles one week, Tahiti the week after, a ski resort the week after that - provided, of course, you kept winning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_SVZskS-lM

Then came In It to Win It in May 2002. If you had said then that it would still be going fourteen years later and thus would be the longest-running of all the UK Lottery game shows, you'd have probably been laughed at. But there are two good reasons why it has lasted so long: the format is as simple as you like, and Dale Winton is of course a brilliant host (although he's unfortunately been a bit off-colour the last few years due to depression).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylBve9cfzUE

Again, it was a while before the next big show came along. Wright Around the World - with Ian Wright Wright Wright, of course - was another two-series wonder, as was the splendidly-titled Come And Have A Go... If You Think You're Smart Enough, which claimed to be the first fully-interactive BBC game show (although viewers who didn't have digital TV, an internet connection or the most up-to-date mobile phone couldn't take part). Come And Have A Go... actually wasn't a Lottery show to begin with, as the video below demonstrates, but big changes for the second series included being wrapped around the draws (and replacing Nicky Campbell with the unlikely pairing of Julian Clary and Newsnight's Emily Maitlis).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O-EOgBIIwg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdTVEu2zkls

Winning Lines quietly ended in October 2004, only to be replaced with the awful Millionaire Manor. The first Lottery show produced by Endemol (best known, of course, for Big Brother and Deal or No Deal), it was basically Jet Set On The Cheap, with a country house instead of exotic holidays. It was also hosted by Mark Durden-Smith, who try as he might will probably never shake off his "Son of Judith Chalmers" tag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pILDHlZQmZ4

(For those of you who don't know, Judith Chalmers is best known for hosting ITV's long-running holiday show Wish You Were Here...?. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mark also hosted this show in its later years.)

It was Endemol, however, who were responsible for the next big Lottery show. 1 vs 100 is another of their global hits (though perhaps not quite on the same scale as BB and DOND); the UK version, beginning in September 2006, is regarded by some game show fans as the best, on account of its simplicity compared to other versions. It ran for four series - Dermot O'Leary hosting the first two, and Ben Shephard the next two - before the recession, and escalating production costs following a BBC-decreed move from Maidstone to Glasgow in 2009, combined to kill it off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvuHzIqV2AQ

The spring of 2007 saw the People's Quiz. This was, quite simply, a search for the UK's best quiz player - but with the addition of a few talent show elements, including nationwide auditions and a "quiz panel" led by Fifteen-to-One's William G Stewart. The execution, however, was so bad that the National Lottery washed its hands of the whole thing halfway through, the remaining episodes airing at 6pm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yGk6h46OW0

Not that it bothered eventual champion Stephanie Bruce; she won a cool £200,700 for her efforts. Or runner-up Mark Labbett, who has since gone on to bigger things...

In It to Win It was the first major show from 12 Yard Productions, who soon followed it up with Eggheads. Only in November 2007, however, did their second Lottery show take to the air - and, again, you'd have probably been laughed at if you said that it would still be going in 2016 and thus be the second longest-running UK Lottery game show in terms of years (though only fourth in terms of episodes at present, behind Jet Set and Winning Lines). But like IItWI, Who Dares Wins has a very simple format - and it also has a very strong playalong factor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FeO7p_D9WM

Jet Set came to an end in August 2007; like Winning Lines, it was replaced by a terrible show. This Time Tomorrow, hosted by Tess Daly, featured a garish make-believe airport, an audience who looked like they had consumed a lot of sugar beforehand, an uninspired format and too many mentions of the show's title for one's liking. Unsurprisingly, eight episodes was all it got - as was the case for its own replacement, Guesstimation, a Talpa creation that was considerably better but still not particularly exciting.

Guesstimation was the second Lottery game show hosted by Nick Knowles, after Who Dares Wins. And in the last few years, "Kernick" (as he's often nicknamed) has become pretty strongly associated with such shows...

In 2011 and 2012 he hosted Secret Fortune, which was produced by Wild Rover in Belfast and featured some kind of toaster-rack machine containing envelopes with cheques in them (one of which would be the contestants' titular secret fortune). It also had a pretty good format, and a decent playalong factor. So quite a few game show fans were disappointed when the Beeb cancelled it after three series, for reasons not adequately explained...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIyGstJlZk0

Nick then took up hosting duties on Break The Safe in 2013. This was produced by Thames Scotland (yes, really) and featured a giant safe (duh) and a big digital clock on the floor that counted down to the end of the game. Unfortunately, its format wasn't very good, and the tabloids were inevitably excited when it was discovered that changes had had to be made to the end game after no-one won anything under the original rules.

That it got a second series in 2014 is therefore quite astonishing.



Most recently, Mr Knowles has hosted 5-Star Family Reunion. Another 12 Yard show, its main attraction is a Newton's Cradle, which acts as a clock in each round. Its format isn't much better than Break The Safe's, however - and it's hard not to notice that even if the titular family reunion isn't won, there is nothing stopping the family members in the studio from spending the money they win on going out to visit the overseas family members anyway...

Again, though, it's managed to get two series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67EzoJbR2r4

Last, but by no means least, is Win Your Wish List. This show began in December 2014, and is produced by Victory Television (owned by Sony). And while it isn't as epic as Winning Lines, doesn't have the playalong factor that Who Dares Wins has, and doesn't feature a cool prop like Secret Fortune, it's nonetheless a pretty decent show - helped no end by a simple format, Shane Richie on hosting duties, and the novelty of the contestants asking each other the questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KObcOXfxx1M

With the draws moving to the iPlayer after tonight, any new game show that takes up the 8pm slot on Saturday night BBC1 will obviously not be built around them, and indeed won't feature any references to the National Lottery whatsoever. And of the four Lottery shows currently running, Who Dares Wins is the only one confirmed to be continuing into the new draw-less era - which means, of course, that it'll be shorn of all Lottery references.

Here endeth this really, really long post.

Skid X

Very nice work there GHG

The one I liked was Who Dares Wins, it had good 'shoutability' when you played along at home and the returning contestants and tactics made it a cut above most Lottery Gameshows. The Jet Set one was also decent.

I never really tuned in regularly for any of the shows, too much faffing about about and schedule changes but some of them were good.

Much better than Winning Streak's absurd guessing games which require no skill at all (by law) and are just a series of shiny lights and random guesses dressed up as an event.

Mr E

Great post, GHG!

Yeah those lottery shows have been pretty consistently entertaining.

Go Harvey Go

And yet Winning Streak has lasted longer than the UK National Lottery itself. That's mad, Ted!

Each episode of Winning Lines began with 49 contestants, numbered from 01 to 49. Six of them would go through to the second round, and the second digits in their respective numbers would be taken; if they matched the last six digits of your phone number in any order then you could phone in to be a contestant in the following week's episode.

I lived in London during the early years of the show, and the last six digits of my phone number there were all odd digits, two of them repeated. So even if I had been old enough to be a contestant, my chances were pretty slim...